By King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci
If we’ve learned nothing else from the last couple decades of explosive growth in King County, it’s that that past attempts to provide housing that’s affordable to everyone in our county have come up short. Really short. So short, in fact, that we need to create an additional 200,000 affordable homes by 2044 to ensure that low-income individuals, people on fixed incomes, and families throughout King County can afford a place to call home.
The results of our failure to provide adequate housing are visible everywhere: An ever-increasing number of people across King County are homeless. Young people leave the region because they don’t see a future they can afford. Racial disparities in our communities persist and grow, with Black, Indigenous and other people of color continuing to be disproportionately harmed by high housing prices.
If we don’t act now to build more housing of all types, including much-needed affordable housing, these gaps will just grow bigger. And while building the housing we need has for years felt like an intractable problem, there is hope on the horizon.
That hope comes in the form of a new and unique collaboration between King County and all 39 of our cities. As all of our cities and the county are making once-in-a-decade major updates to their comprehensive plans – which form the DNA of how a local government plans for growth – we can begin to turn the tide in a way that fits our communities while making them more inclusive and affordable.
In planning for future growth, city leaders have long pointed out the benefits of “local control” over land use planning and zoning, based on the principle that local government is closest to the people we serve, and thus is the right level of government to enact residents’ vision for the place they live. However, the concept of local control has some historical downsides – it has been used as an argument to block new housing, and thus has been a way to disenfranchise people and families of lower means, people of color and other marginalized groups.
So, what has changed? Taking the cue from House Bill 1220, a 2021 state law directing all jurisdictions to “plan for and accommodate” affordable housing at every level, representatives from cities and the county started collaborating on the issue. Together, they crafted and all jurisdictions unanimously agreed with recommendations from King County’s Affordable Housing Committee to amend county Comprehensive Planning Policies and set individualized housing affordability targets for each jurisdiction and hold each other accountable to meeting these local goals.
These targets are ambitious and bold. For example, my home city of Bellevue will need to plan for 35,000 net new housing units, 30,349 of which must be affordable to people making less than the area median income. Every city and the county have agreed to similar ambitious commitments.
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This means that cities will plan for new forms of housing that will incorporate the so-called “missing middle” of townhouses and other affordable housing types. It means cities will plan to take steps to intentionally address and undo the harms of racially restrictive housing policies of the past that continue to show up in segregated patterns of housing in the present. It means cities will plan to address displacement of existing communities and provide more places to live throughout their communities, not just in industrial areas or along highways. But the solutions in each city will be tailored to the conditions and vision of that city and its local representatives.
Recognizing we are all in this together, we also agreed to hold each other accountable. The Affordable Housing Committee will review the proposed housing-related parts of every comprehensive plan and provide feedback and recommendations for how each jurisdiction can better meet our ambitious and specific housing goals. Following adoption, the Affordable Housing Committee will monitor and track how well cities are implementing the plans on a regular basis.
Getting to this point was difficult work, and took a strong partnership of local government, private and nonprofit partners, and a dedicated group of representatives from key communities impacted by high housing costs. But we all came together because the data was so compelling, and we all know that behind the data are human beings who all need and deserve a safe, healthy place to live. They are nurses, teachers, and firefighters, our family, friends, and coworkers. They are seniors hoping to age in place and young families with dreams to raise their kids in safe communities where they have access to opportunity. They are why we are here, and our work is ultimately for them.
With this countywide housing agreement, we are empowering each city to do that in the way that works best for their residents while recognizing that every jurisdiction needs to step up to address our shared regional housing crisis. And I’m hopeful that with this effort, we can close the gap and make King County – and our whole region – a place where people can find housing and build a life filled with opportunity.
Claudia Balducci represents District 6 on the Metropolitan King County Council, which includes parts or all of Bellevue, Kirkland, Mercer Island, the Points Communities, and Redmond. She serves as chair of the King County Affordable Housing Committee and previously co-chaired the Regional Affordable Housing Taskforce (2017-18).
Where is the Action? Where are the statistics of results from all the funding to date. The 2018 King County Affordable Housing Task Force report, already stated these facts. It Called for Cities to build affordable housing in the 50% ami and 30% ami below, affordable housing units. They Provided the dashboard for all cities to build based on population, the housing needs in 2019, as well as predicted for 2040.The state offered Grant’s and Tax exempt incentives for developers who were to build Affordable housing units.
Seems most cities and developers just labeled, 70%- 85% ami market rate housing as affordable, to take advantage, received the incentives funding and took tax exempt breaks, however received higher profits and citied higher taxes, yet failed to deliver anything but market rate housing units. Where is the accountability and enforcement stats to date of built number of affordable housing units?
Can taxes and Grant’s for failure to deliver as agreed be collected now?
If cities and developers failed for the last five years, what is different now? Did this task force really live up to the millions in funding? Will Cities and Developers be held accountable to deliver 50% and 30% below affordable housing units to keep residents and families housed Now?
Five years later, replacing the task force name and dashboard is suppose to solve the number of residents being priced out by high rents, taxes, and low number of affordable housing units? The number of residents living in cars, tents in encampments, that have monthly income have increase 23%, are still unable to find an affordable housing unit?
The using of the phase “affordable housing”. Currently changing the label to “real estate affordable housing”, that only starts at 60% ami, when our medium incomes in area has increased substantially, will fail the action, to build affordable housing at the most desperately needed 50% and 30% and below, affordable housing units for seniors, veterans, those with disabilities, those low income wage earners. This does nothing but build more market rate housing, continues to put profits in pockets of developers, real estate, property owners, while supporting Economic EVICTION! Continuing to allow cities, and developers to receive grants and tax incentives, without building for the desparently needed low 50% ami and extremely low 30% ami, affordable housing units, does nothing but allow more waste of taxpayers funds. Property owners, given Grant’s for affordable housing units, increased rents for profits, pricing out residents into homelessness, Instead of helping our residents stay healthy and stay housed. The lower income residents that contribute and support their communities by working in low paying jobs, volunteering that cities need to function.
We need oversite of tax dollars, oversite of programs and cities to verify the delivery with results, rather than more funds thrown at those with no results, that deceive, waste, destroy.
‘Here’s how’? You’re kidding, right?
This says absolutely nothing. Cities will ‘plan…’ cities will ‘address… ‘ How much time and money has gone into this? The most absolutely hilarious phrase: ‘Getting to this point was difficult work.’ Oh please. What point is that? You could have written ‘we need more affordable housing’ on the back of an envelope and had the same value. A bunch of people with no concrete proposals to share for citizen evaluation declared victory for agreeing that somebody else should do something. Like… what? Process is not action.
What mechanism is there to ensure housing affordability targets are met? Without a form of accountability besides the monitoring of progress, it sounds like the status quo with a countywide agreement to disagree.
Details please! Rezoning neighborhoods will not magically produce affordable housing as those efforts tend to *increase* the price of land and property taxes – all factors for affordability. I would love to see our local electeds prioritize multigenerational flexible housing that suits both families and seniors. The Seattle area is rapidly becoming a homogenous community for the high wage earners and pushing other phases of life elsewhere.
We most definitely need low and middle income housing, so people can (a) have shelter and, (b) live closer to where they work. Unfortunately, last April when members of Seattle’s OPCD were questioned about this very thing, they said they had no mechanism by which to force the building of low and middle income housing in NE and N Seattle. So while Seattle may have agreed in principle with Ms. Balducci, I don’t see it happening in at least those areas of Seattle, so we will continue to be geographically stratified according to socioeconomic status.
This plan sounds great. Now do the work to make it real. We need to build a lot more housing. This will force the cost of housing down, but it will also force the value of housing down. The latter is important because when housing cost / value increases by 8% or more per year, it starts to look like an attractive investment vehicle for Wall Street. This is why we have REIT mutual funds, and big landlords and investors buying up residential property. In the long run, this is very bad for local folks who just want a place to live. It sets the expectation that housing value will continue to rise by 8-10% per year. It puts pressure on builders and governments to not build more, so that housing value keeps up with other investments. If housing costs increased like normal inflation (2-5% maybe), then it would be unattractive to investors, and we would return to local, small-scale ownership of residential property.